When individuals want to manage their own funds, each individual will purchase and manage stocks and bonds based on his own judgment, in this case, investment risk is always high due to wide fluctuations in prices resulting from market forces.
Accordingly, for example, there are financial products such as “pooled investment vehicles”. A “pooled investment vehicle” is a type of financial product similar to a “mutual fund” or a “collective investment vehicle.” In a pooled investment vehicle funds are gathered together from a large number of customers, the large fund thus collected is managed in the form of assets such as stocks and bonds by an investment specialist, and the earnings therefrom are paid to the customers.
A “pooled investment vehicle” like this is a product, which an individual can buy at a small investment, and keep the risk of price fluctuations low by diversifying the investment of the collected fund into numerous assets such as stocks and bonds.
In addition, since a “pooled investment vehicle” is managed by a specialist instead of an individual using his own judgment to invest in assets such as stocks and bonds, it is an easy-to-use financial product that eliminates the need for the individual to acquire the knowledge and skills required to manage a fund.
In a “pooled investment vehicle” like this, the collected funds are diversified into assets such as U.S. stocks, U.S. bonds, foreign stocks, and foreign bonds but if the entire amount of the collected funds is diversified at the same time, there is no way to avoid the risk associated with current price fluctuations brought on by market influences at the time of investment.
Thus, a method for reducing current price fluctuation risk when diversifying the collected fund, as described above has been introduced.
One method for reducing price fluctuation risk is known as “dollar-cost averaging” technique. This technique attempts to reduce the risk of current price fluctuations by purchasing only a quantity of financial products capable of being bought with a fixed monthly amount of funds rather than purchasing the same quantity of financial products each month, making small purchases when current prices are high, and making large purchases when current prices are low.
However, this “dollar-cost averaging” is a system which calls for withdrawing a preset amount of money from a customer's deposit account periodically on a prescribed date (e.g. once each month for a specified number of months), and using this amount to purchase a targeted investment fund at the time of the withdrawal.
Thus, the investor or a financial product broker must make a series of periodic (e.g. monthly) purchases, creating an administrative problem for the investor or broker, and optimize the investment return on that portion of the investor's fund which the investor intends to invest during the program.
Thus, the problem is that when a customer desires to make a large investment, he must do so by dividing the investment into smaller amounts, making this approach too complex for practical application.
Another problem is that even a financial product broker, who handles a “pooled investment vehicle” like that described above, is compelled by “dollar-cost averaging” to manage the portion of the fund so as to maximize investment earnings via this technique.
Accordingly, an object of the present invention is to provide a financial product management system, a financial product management method, a financial product management program, and a computer-readable medium for storing the financial product management program for managing a financial product, which can attempt to reduce investment risks associated with current price fluctuations, even when carrying out a lump-sum investment without dividing funds into smaller amounts.